Chesterton – Materialism vs. Mysticism

Thanks to Rube for putting me on to Chesterton’s audio books. This last week, I have hardly noticed my twice-a-day one hour long commute as I have been immersed in Orthodoxy. More than once, I have felt compelled to pause the mp3 half-way to work or home and spend the rest of the drive shaking my head and talking to myself, which experts say is good for a developing mind.

Thus far, the treatise appears to be almost exclusively against non-Christian, humanistic thought, but I would like to apply it further to the various sacramentologies found within in the Church. In the world, there are two sorts of skeptics: the one who “cannot believe his senses”, and the one who “cannot believe anything else” but his senses. According to Chesterton, both are maniacal, not because they are unreasonable, but because they are utterly reasonable, and this effects their ruin.

Likewise, in the Church, there is the baptist who cannot believe his senses when he sees, feels, smells, and tastes the tangible signs and seals of God’s Covenant promises, and there is the RC who holds to an ex opere operato view of the sacraments, and with regard to the sacraments, he cannot believe anything but his senses. According to Chesterton, both ends of this sort of continuum are a result of speculative logic and the destruction of mystery.

“The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. … He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. … Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.“ Chapter 2, The Maniac

So, there cannot be understanding apart from the acceptance of mystery. There are certain inconsistencies (or more properly, mysteries) that surface when the confession states, for instance, that the Covenant of Grace is made with Christ and all the elect as His seed (WCF LC31), and that the children of believers (not all of whom are elect) are also members of that covenant (WCF LC166). Adoption is only said to be a benefit of those who are effectually called (WCF SC32) and thus elect (WCF LC68), but baptism is said to be the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church (WCF XXVIII.I) which is the house and family of God (WCF XXV.II). How then is baptism not adoption even for non-elect recipients of it?

On the question of materialism vs. mysticism, note where Chesterton lands. “The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.”  He asserts that understanding is found in sticking mostly to the visible, while allowing a dash of the mysterious. With regard to the objective reality of the sacraments, this seems to be where the confession lands as well:

WCF XXVIII.V “Although it is a great sin to contemn or neglect this ordinance, yet grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed unto it, as that no person can be regenerated, or saved, without it: or, that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated.

VI The efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet, notwithstanding, by the right use of this ordinance, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and conferred, by the Holy Ghost, to such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongs unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in His appointed time.”

Here, the confession acknowledges the efficaciousness of the visible sign, while also acknowledging the invisibility of God’s eternal counsel. The one whom Chesterton refers to as a “morbid logician” would attempt to reconcile the tension and eventually either favor the visible above the invisible, or vice versa. One will be a baptist and say the reality lies in God’s invisible election (i.e. regardless of baptism, only the elect are in the Covenant of Grace), and the another will be a papist and say that the truth lies in the visible sign (i.e. all who are baptized are infused with grace upon baptism).

From what I gather, the framers of the Westminster Confession knew the propensity for morbid logical speculation in the western mind, so they warned against it and called it sin. Listed in the Larger Catechism among the sins forbidden in the first and third commands are “bold and curious searching into [God's] secrets” and “curious prying into, and misapplying of God’s decrees and providences.” (WCF LC105,113) The scripture text offered for these on both counts is Deuteronomy 29:29 “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.”